


Many Happy Returns

by toujours_nigel



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-30
Updated: 2010-03-30
Packaged: 2017-10-08 12:57:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/75861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toujours_nigel/pseuds/toujours_nigel





	Many Happy Returns

“What’s this, then?" Ron asks, for the ninth time—she’s been counting—in the last hour, picks up a file that is clearly marked ‘Eyes Only’ and, as if that isn’t enough, ‘Confidential’.

She clamps her hand hard around her quill, watches the ink blot on parchment, wishes she could just use a ball-point pen instead—even a fountain pen, she’s not fussy—and forces herself to not snatch it from him. It does Ron no good to be reprimanded constantly, Mrs. Weasley tells her, men need their egos massaged, Fleur tells her. “Put it down, Ron,” she brings out between gritted teeth, tries a smile that looks like a grimace.

Ron wipes his hand on his trousers, and perches more comfortably on her desk. Her latest Memo from Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office (Theodore Remus Lupin, proving himself somewhat of an asset, has created spreadsheets of various possible—and implausible—artefacts that can at all be enchanted; she’s only half-way down the list as yet, and already thinks Laetitia Greenwood let him ride roughshod because he kept pestering her) lodges under his left buttock, corner crumpled. “On the proper treatment of House-Elves,” Ron drawls, “Really, Hermione, weren’t we over this already?”

“No, Ron.” She will not shove him off the desk, she will not, she will not, she will not. “Ron, get off my papers, you’re crushing them.”

“Nah,” he says, glances at the now-teetering stack of files, “they’re okay. Hey,” and, of course this would be one document he read to the end of, “you’ve got Malfoy’s signature on this.”

“Yeah, Ron,” at least he’s climbed off, she’ll have to get Ted to make her a new copy of the Memo, or she could just go talk to him, this one’s irrevocably crumpled. “He owns house-elves.” And the only way to come to any sort of decision regarding the proper treatment of house-elves is by comparing discussions with as many current or previous owners of house-elves as can be compiled, and then cross-checking across socio-economic status—many of the old families having shrunken in economic status in the War and its continuing aftermath. Ron has been told this. He doesn’t want to know.

“But it’s Malfoy,” Ron says, like school wasn’t twenty years ago, like they haven’t all been forced to grow up. “How d’you know he’ll stick to his word?”

“It isn’t a pledge, Ronald.” And she’s—again—done exactly what she keeps promising herself she’ll avoid, because Ron looks up at her slightly warily, and she has to force herself to pull her voice into a lower register. “It’s an account of what he considers unconscionable…”

Ron, reassured—she shouldn’t have done that, but he was just so Ron, and it grows difficult to bear; she sympathises so with Molly—has stopped paying her any attention, and drops the file in his hand on top of the others, off-centre and at an angle. “Right. Come have dinner.”

“I can’t,” she says, watches the ink soaking through to her desk. “Ron, I have to get this in by Wednesday.”

“I got you vindaloo,” he says, smile creeping back on his face, eyes crinkling, “and y’know how Mr. Das looks at me like I’m a waste of flesh.”

“You pronounce his name wrong all the time,” she says, mentally closing her files, resigning herself to waking up before dawn and hoping, hoping that Marianne remembered that there was no substitute for coffee, not even _Ennervate_.

“Well, it’s hard to pronounce," he says, and “I still get _Wingardium Leviosa_ wrong, times.”

She doesn’t say that Rathindra isn’t that difficult to pronounce, really Ron, because he looks at her in the way that means he’s putting a lot of effort into being charming, but it niggles at her while she rescues her files from his grabbing hands, and stacks them neatly. When she finishes and turns to him, she surprises a look on his face that she’s put there. “Have you fed the owls,” she asks, gentle, because he puts her in mind of Mercury watching Iris, at first, judging whether he could get within reach of the mouse she was guarding. “Ron?”

“Yeah. We’re hosting one of the school-owls, too. Hugo wrote in.”

“Is he,” she opens the folder, puts the sheet in properly, closes and stacks it with the others, “complaining about Arithmancy again? It was his choice, too late to shift now.”

“Nah, nothing like that.” He leans in and shuts off her desk-lamp—he’s still not used to electricity, makes him uncomfortable—and the shadows leap to the lines of his face, dig them deep. “Rosie’s bit friendly with Scorpius.”

“Ron.” Don’t assume, she tells herself, but he drops his gaze, and his foot scuffs at the carpet. “Ronald Weasley, are you making our son spy on his sister?”

“I trust her,” he says, and it’s deeply frustrating how much he sounds like his mother, “it’s him I don’t.”

“They’re eleven!” She’s all for constant vigilance, but he’s eleven, and he’s perfectly polite. Not that she knows him, not really; off-hand remarks from Malfoy don’t count.

“He’s Malfoy’s spawn,” he says, and he isn’t even shouting, he’s just standing there, looking at her like she’s the one being unreasonable. Like she’s missing something.

“Ron.”

“C’mon, food’s getting cold.”

He’s set the table, already, and he’s done it right, and there’s a bottle of Chianti on the table, and the vindaloo is a lie. “Ron?” She can’t have forgotten a birthday, right? Or an anniversary? Or…

“Hey, no.” He pulls her chair back and pushes her into it. “It’s okay, relax. Nothing special.”

“What’s with the kebabs, then?” Ron doesn’t much like Indian, which, well. He doesn’t much like French cuisine, either. Or Italian. Or Greek. Or anything that Molly Weasley wouldn’t cook, really.

He looks at her like they’re children dating—they’ve never been that, fell accidentally into love and matrimony—and raises his wine in a toast. “You’ve been working pretty hard, lately, so I thought you needed a break.”

Ron loves her. That’s why he does these things. It’s sweet. Never mind she’d planned on a sandwich and lots of coffee and staying up late. He loves her, he wants her to not be overwhelmed by work, and besides, the food is delicious, no matter the wine will leave her buzzed and unable to work. When she looks up his mouth has taken on a pinched look, like he’s beginning to comprehend that this wasn’t entirely wise. “I did,” she says, and “thanks,” because he means well. “How was work for you?”

***

The next morning, Marianne is wary of her, which she puts down to self-preservation. She feels like sleeping in might have been a good idea—not like she’d managed much sleep, with the long-winded dinner and painfully-light conversation and Ron’s mouth on hers and his strained-for care—why had he been so careful?—and the low-voiced talking through the night, like the children were in their rooms and not Scotland—and must look like she’s about to start—at the very least—an inter-departmental feud. But she needs to be here for… She needs to be here, and Ron’s meltingly romantic smile comprises no reason to skip work. She isn’t a giddy newly-wed, anyway.

But when Teddy looks as cautious when he sticks his head around the door—Teddy, raised by a village comprising Andromeda Tonks, Narcissa Malfoy, Molly Weasley, Kreacher, and whoever was close enough to baby-sit at the time, is afraid of very little—and starts telling her how horribly his department—her old department—is floundering without her, the low panic that has been present since she saw the candlelit dinner-table, every fork aligned perfectly, pushes up through the block she imposes between Ms. Granger-Weasley and Aunt Hermione. “Teddy?”

“…and then there were the keys, seriously, I think that’s… yeah?” His hair goes a stark black, and his nose tries to turn aquiline. “Yes?”

“Is everything alright?” She can’t ask him this, he’s just a kid. But he’s honest with her, and he’s not so very attached to her that he’ll need to protect himself. “With everyone?”

What has she forgotten? Because she’s forgotten something. Teddy’s looking at her in a twisted echo of Marianne’s expression, and Ron’s. “Yeah. Yes. We’re okay. Gran wants you to come to tea, if you can make the time, maybe this week.” He’s taller than he was when he walked in, towers over her when he stands up. “What I came in to say, actually. And,” his nose wins the fight, and his profile’s sharper than Malfoy’s now, “to ask whether the Memo’ll do. I can do another, if you want.”

“It’s very meticulous,” she offers, and allows herself a smile—she’s taught him well. “I might want to speak with you later, to clarify things.”

“Sure,” he says, and crosses to the door in two strides, stops with a hand on door-knob. “Yeah, we should talk. I,” he smiles, sharply wicked, “have ideas.” Poor Laetitita; Teddy’d have run her into the ground even if he’d been above using his charm and appearance on her.

But she’s mostly immune to him, any rate—amazing how being thrown-up on stays with you for years—and has work, besides, and Ron’s oddly-vulnerable smile when she left today, to sustain her. So she sighs and shakes her head, and tries not to raise a disapproving eyebrow when Marianne looks a little dazed, coming in with the Daily Prophet.

It’s, so the paper tells her, 07.12.2018. Which would make yesterday the sixth, and she had forgotten an anniversary, after all. She can understand why Ron preferred to keep it that way, of course.

By the time Marianne comes around with her fifth cup of coffee, she’s stacked all her files neatly on the left upper corner of her desk, and _reparo_-ed the frayed edge of _Fifty Ways to Get Your Way (Without Upsetting Others)_. It’s not really a book she much likes—how does it matter if others are upset as long as what you want is the right thing?—but no book should be mal-treated. It’s illogical.   



End file.
